N. 3 - 21 aprile 2001 - Giano Bifronte

such things have known for a long time that they are utter fakes.
The "Nova" folks looked into the matter and were not long in
discovering the truth. All they did was to visit the area, where they
found the dentist, who was reluctant to discuss the matter when he
discovered that they wanted to ask some penetrating questions rather
than do the kind of careless and incomplete "investigation" von
Däniken had done. Within an hour they had found out where the stones
were really made and drove a few miles out of town to order a custommade
heart transplant item to be prepared while they waited and filmed
the process.
The point is that von Däniken had this procedure available to him too.
He was well equipped and financed and able to find out the truth about
the stones; he simply did not want to.
Of course, merely finding a local artisan who said he was the maker of
the stones, and who then made one to order that was indistinguishable
from the "genuine" ones, proved only that he was a good artisan and
could have made the whole lot. What was needed was some sort of
evidence that the ones offered as genuine were actually fakes. And it
was not hard to find. Great antiquity was claimed for the stones as
finished items. This meant that the shallow carved grooves were bound
to be weathered on the edges, a characteristie that could be seen with
the use of a microscope. Careful examination by the "Nova" experts
revealed that no only was there no such weathering but also that the
stone custom-made on the spot was indistinguishable from the genuine
ones.
I could have told them that there was a story going around Lima in the
huaquero (grave-robber) hangouts that if you mentioned your
profession to the doctor in Ica, then excused him for fifteen minutes,
you would hear dental drills whining away in a back room until he
returned from the depths of his museum with a carved stone that, by a
strange and somewhat contrived coincidence, bore a picture of someone
from the distant past engaged in your very profession. Also well known
to huaqueros is an aging process used to make fake artifacts look old. It
is a treatment that involves donkey dung and is best left to the
imagination.
There is at least one thing for which von Däniken must be given credit.
He has improved upon the crude technique of the Big Lie used by
others and given us, instead, the Provocative Fact. He bombards us with
interesting and in some cases quite valid bits of information and allows
us to assume that what he has presented is pertinent and laden with
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